WHO: The hackathon, in keeping with the greater Occupy movement, is meant to be an open, inclusive, and empowering environment. We would like to assemble a broad coalition of hackers, coders, designers, subject-matter experts, and individuals who can provide context to these complex issues.

We will be developing data-driven responses to issues surrounding the following four themes:

Housing, Foreclosures, and Mortgages

Banking and Financial Industries and the 2008 Financial Crisis

Defense Spending

Campaign Finance

We'll also be developing an Occupy Data website -- mashing up the best of data aggregation, exploration, visualization and curation tools -- to empower grassroots groups and activists by providing facts and well-designed visuals in support of their efforts.

Check out some of the ideas we are brainstorming on this live spreadsheet and see what the other Occupy Hackathons across the nation are planning here.

Bring your ideas, skills, creativity, questions and critical perspectives as we explore datasets using free and open source tools and software. We’ll search for, and then visualize, connections from one place to another – open to all participants! The model is for people to arrange local venues for f2f meetups, work locally, and share/collaborate real time via skype/chat/twitter/google docs and etherpads, etc. If you can’t make it to one of the physical locations, you can join in remotely.

Organizer

Act as a resource for various entities within Occupy DC and the national Occupy movement to strengthen initiatives through data gathering, sensitive to legal and licensing issues, analysis, and visualization

Develop Occupy Data projects to address overarching grievances of the various Occupy locations across the United States, which may include economic inequality, identity-based discrimination and (in)equality of opportunity, corruption, lobbying, campaign finance, militarization, the financial crisis, the criminal (in)justice system, destruction of the global ecosystem, mortgages and foreclosures, and related themes